Each year, computer systems face degradation due to vulnerabilities. For example, it has become quite difficult for a network security administrator to maintain an accurate inventory of hardware and, in particular, software programs residing on each computer system that form part of a computer network. Indeed, only minutes are needed for a user to download new software programs onto a computer system from the Internet. With each new piece of hardware or software added to a computer system, another potential vulnerability from which the computer network must be protected is created. However, the network security administrator may not even be aware of the need to remediate the computer network to address a newly discovered vulnerability in a particular piece of computer hardware or software if the network security administrator erroneously believes that the hardware or software is not installed within any of the computer systems forming the computer network.
In order for the network security administrator to remediate the vulnerabilities, the network security administrator must typically expend a large amount of labor and resources to identify vulnerabilities. Additional labor is then required to install a patch, a remedy or otherwise resolve or bypass the identified vulnerabilities. Oftentimes, this involves the network security administrator visiting each affected computer system and manually applying the necessary remediation.